The Beginning of the German Women's Movement

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The Beginning of the German Women’s Movement

In order to understand any type of women’s movement, one must understand the country’s history. Activities like political outcries, as well as war can start tremendous movements. In Germany, one activity especially, beginning of the world wars, triggered the response of many women to act and fight for their rights they strongly believed in.

The limits of women were felt in the political, economic, and family realms of life. Women differed from men in their ability to be witnesses, make wills, act as guardians for their own children as well as buy or own property. Women at this time dealt with these restrictions by voicing their opinion or locating the source and pleading their statement. They did this knowing that most sources were men who created the laws in the first place.

In the early twentieth century the bourgeois women’s movement first started to appear. This was the beginning of the industrial revolution and modernization. This period of time seemed less daunting than previous generations due to the fewer burdens of domestic chores. With a lesser amount of chores to attend it would seem that women in Germany were able to take a more serious role in the public sphere. However, to have a role in society, political involvement was necessary, and their government was not allowing it. The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the socialist women’s movement demanded that women should have the right to vote. They felt this because for one to be involved in politics the action of voting needed to be taken. At this time the socialist women’s movement fought for a voting right of all adults, not just women. This organization felt that no matter what class, status or wealth, all adults deserved this right. The bourgeois women’s movement however felt that women had a different role, similar to men in value, but much different in the focus of family, education and cultural values.

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Shortly before World War I there was opposition from different social parties about how their country should participate in the war. A founding leader of the Social Democratic Women’s Party, Clara Zetkin wrote in her magazine, Die Gleichheit, about her opposition of the war from a woman’s point of view.

As wives, mothers and sisters of soldiers, as housewives facing the difficulties of food production, and as mothers of small children growing up with out their fathers, women had to bear terrible psychological burdens. The physical demands which women had imposed on them by the increasing shortage of food were ...

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